Re: Slink _minimum_ install from 2.1.4 disks
On 5 Jan 1999, Adam Di Carlo wrote:
> > I will do another install or two, just to pin down how much room
> > depmod needs (the base requires a little over 23M), and get back to
> > this list with some better numbers and a list of installed
> > packages...
>
> Also, have you tried the specifically low-memory installation?
No. A `cat /proc/meminfo` right before reading in DRV1440 reveals 1960k
of _total_ memory on a 4096k system; am I correct in assuming that the OS
overhead is 2136k... if so, I'll try at 3M and (if possible) at 2.5M...
although I'm not sure I would want anyone to see a stock DGL kernel
running in 2.5M of RAM :)
<...>
> You must have at least 4MB of RAM and 20MB of hard disk.
>
> >From your message, this should be 4MB RAM, and 25MB disk?
You need 9M of VM to get past configuring the device drivers and
33M of disk space to extract the base archive... it looks like a
resource poor installation will need over 2M of RAM and at least
(33M + (9M - RAM) + 2M) of HDD space.
My system, with 4M RAM and a 40M HDD, just makes it!
There is a possibility that the size of my HDD (40.88M), and the
uncertainty in my data (a couple, or maybe few, hundred K) have conspired
against me. The formula should be check independently.
<...>
> need around 2 GB.
>
> Is this reasonable still?
<shrug>
> That you have to hand massage stuff is bad. I guess I wouldn't want
> to document limits that were predicated on hand-tweaking.
No doubt! I do need to tweak the system to get the install I want,
but the numbers I am generating are based on a standard installation.
The source of error is in getting my data from df and /proc/meminfo,
asyncronously with the installation procedure. It is possible that I
missed a peak in VM or disk demands. The fix for this error source is to
have the software log VM and FS status at the proper points in the
installation procedure... for this distribution - during device driver
configuration, and when both the base archive and base files are on the
hard disk.
anyways,
Armed with the formula I repartitioned the HDD and did ya fresh install,
actually I did a couple. Everything was more or less identical during
each dinstall, monitoring revealed 300k and 400k for VM and FS overhead
respectively (I think I heard it squeek). Then I ran into a problem;
both installs seemed to hang up at some point after the netbase script is
executed (I am most certainly _not_ blaming netbase for anything).
The first install proceeded from dinstall to the smoke test without
interruption, the second had a power down for half an hour before the
smoke test. When the system hung (I gave it 30 min), CTRL-c had no effect
(waited 5 min,) but the three finger salute would start a reboot in under
a minute. It didn't matter if the reboot was allowed to proceed, or was
interupted with a power down and then restarted, the system would come up
as expected.
The hang-up problem is probably related to linux not being able to figure
out my hardware (how do I do a DOS `HIMEM /MACHINE:7' equivalent?),
which results in SEGVs from time to time. I only mention these hang-ups
because I can't really say that I managed to use the given formula to
boot the system with the minimum predicted requirements, without
intervening in some way. :(
pt. 2 will bitch about some blank screens, long waits, possible fixes and
maybe a bug ... but it will have to wait 'til this afternoon, when I have
had some sleep.
later,
Bruce
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